Conference Agenda

The conference agenda provides an overview and details of sessions. In order to view sessions on a specific day or for a certain room, please select an appropriate date or room link. You may also select a session to explore available abstracts and download papers and presentations.

Cartography is the realm of specialists, land surveyor and mapmakers? Participatory Cartography says otherwise! Using the experience from Benin, we show how citizens can play the main role in demarcating their community’s borders. The process of Participatory Cartography places the community’s perception of its own boundaries at the centre and offers an inclusive and feasible method of settling internal border disputes which inhibit countless government policies. The result is a widely supported demarcation based on a community’s perception and identities rather than straight lines drawn by a ruler or nonsensical borders due to gerrymandering. Finally, maybe the best thing about Participatory Cartography: it is cheap.

Registration and Release of Customary-land for Private Enterprise: Lessons from Papua New Guinea

Satish Chand

University of New South Wales, Australia

Land held under customary tenure has proven difficult to register and release for private enterprise globally. This is because the costs of developing secure rights to land held under communal ownership is high given that such ownership rules out a ‘pay-to-use-the-property’ system while punitive negotiation and policing costs make a ‘pay-him-not-to-use-the-property’ system ineffective (Demsetz, 1967, p. 355). Here I document reforms to institutions governing access to land held under customary title in Papua New Guinea that has imbedded collective ownership whilst allowing for a ‘pay-to-use-the-land’ for private enterprise. Reforms put in place over the past decade have allowed for voluntary incorporation of landowning clans, the registration of their land, and the leasing of this land for up to 99 years. The ongoing reforms provide lessons both for Papua New Guinea and for others wrestling with the challenges of making available land held by customary groups for individual enterprise.

Supporting Greater Tenure Security For Community And Customary Land Rights – Lessons Learned From The Field And How Community Led Participatory Mapping Empowers Small Holder Farmers In Myanmar.

Nicholas Thomas, Thiengi May Soe, Myat Thu Aung

Tetra Tech, United States of America

The democratic transition of power in Myanmar, following the handover of power to the National League for Democracy (NLD) administration, is still in its infancy and yet faces serious challenges. The absence of land tenure security is a significant issue facing rural communities throughout the country, a situation that has led to weak agricultural development, heightened rates of rural poverty and in the worse cases, the dispossession of land resources previously accessed by entire communities.

The USAID funded Land Tenure Project has supported the development of a National Land Use Policy (NLUP) and has been evaluating the implementation of articles of the NLUP at a series of pilot sites throughout the country. Community led participatory mapping of different land resources have been undertaken in coordination with local authorities, local civil society and the communities themselves. The technical approaches developed as part of this work will be shared as will the outputs and lessons learnt from these activities that will inform the development of a new National Land Law that will recognize the land rights of communities, ethnic minorities and women.

Norway - one of the few countries donating over 1% of its gross national income in official development assistance, supported the land sector in Kyrgyzstan from 2013 to 2016. With a grant of 1,4 million USD, the project “Securing Ownership to Land” implemented by the Norwegian Mapping Authority and the State Registration Service of Kyrgyzstan, was aimed at improvement of registration and information services to all groups of users requesting property registration and information. The project was built upon important achievements of the First and the Second Cadastre Projects funded by the World Bank. The Norwegian project was focused on specification of improvements to property registration system; technical and professional capacity building; knowledge transfer and training; surveying and mapping the remaining 20 % of privatized properties; and extension of KYRPOS - the network of permanent reference stations. Using of UAV technology for "mapping on demand" was tested and proven relevant for smaller areas and mapping corridors. The project contributed to improvements in servicing clients by reducing the average time needed for cadastral surveying and property registration. The project is now completed, delivering satisfactory results to all involved parties and meeting its development goal in improving security of ownership to land in Kyrgyzstan.